Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese

GoodFellas is a film about the american mafia based on a true story. The story takes place in Brooklyn in 1955, we follow Henry Hill's life, a boy who always wanted to become a Gangster. Indeed, at the beginning of the film he says :  "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" and he is going to reach it by being hired when he was 11 by the most important gangster family of Brooklyn : The Lucchese crime family. Henry learns the basis of the life as a mafia. He becames very quickly one of the best guys in the group. In this group there are "El Capo" Polly acted by Paul Sorvino, and two other men very influent and powerfull, Tommy, acted by Joe Pesci and Jimmy acted by Robert de Niro, who acts in a lot of mafia movies. 
 But when they are involved in a drugs affair,  Henry's life is going to change dramatically. 

This is the trailer of the movie. 

We can consider this movie as a thriller because there are all elements which are characteristic of this genre.
Indeed, there is a central protagonist, Henry Hill who is telling his story thanks to a voice-over. We can see all his life since his childhood until the end. His job makes him faces the death all the time, either because he has to burry someone killed by his "friends", either because he is threatened. 
Henry has to be careful because in the film Tommy kills a guy who belongs to another band of gangsters and this band reach to killed Tommy and another man. So some times its very dangerous because in his job he doesn't have real friends. Then, at the end, he has to change his identity because Jimmy wants to kill him. We should not forget either that he goes in jail twice. 
The main storyline is about his life as a gangster, it shows how its like to be a gangster.
 He has to gain money commiting infractions. But when he is involved with drugs, his aim is to do things behind the back of "El Capo" without being discovered by him. 
There is also Tommy who is very unpredictable and kills people without reason, so Jimmy and Henry must hide Tommy's murders. It's kind of the opposite of a mystery that has to be resolved. 
Henry Hill tell us the story, we see everything through his point of view. His voice-over explains the character's personnality, the actions, the project of futurs thefts and the slightest details of the gangster life. 
This movie is based on a true story so in most cases the actions can only be true. Furthermore, we can see that everything in the film is very credible because we can found them in a lot of other movies like "The Godfather" or "Malavita". 
The notion of justice here is in every part of the film, indeed, the characters dispense justice by themselves, its not very conventionnal but this is the gangster law! And the morality is more or less the same. Because the gangsters don't have real morality, only Henry's wife has a kind of guilty conscience. She is the only one who have a real and "normal" morality. Henry's friends have their own morality, the law of the strongest.
The unique sign of innocence in this movie are the two henry's daughters, who live the further away as possible of their father bussiness.

Statistic about the American Dream

This graph is not surprising to me because we can see that opportunity comes first and this is the basic value of the American Dream, indeed, for a lot of emigrants this is a land where everyone can work their way up and achieve upward mobility. Then, freedom ranks second.
To explain that we can remember the Founding Father who were the seven politicians who signed the declaration of independence in1776 and 11 years after wrote the Constitution in 1787.
 It was too, a welcoming land for the Pilgrim Fathers who were Puritans who traveled to the USA in 1620 aboard the mayflower to escape religious persecutions in Great Britain. Since this time, American has become a symbole of freedom and an example of democraty.
Financial security aspect is a very important aspect too, for the people need to have monney to meet their own family's needs. We can oppose it to wealth which shows more a kind of desire to strike it rich. Indeed, we can speak of wealth when the people want to meet needs that they don't have like a huge house, lots of cars, the last technological products... etc
Family is an idea which is liked by everybody. Everybody wants to have the perfect model of family which means, two working parents, children who have a very prestigious education and who will be part of the consumer society.
The item of happiness can regroup all the other categories, because when the people manage to be rich, with a lot of hard work and will power, when they have a perfect family, when they need nothing else, they imagine that they will be happy... But as is often the money can't buy happiness ! 


This document redefines the American Dream as the people see it nowadays.We can see that the values aren't the same because the society has changed a lot over the last centuries. We notice a kind of fear of the future for example when 47% of the people are dreaming of money for their retirement. It's true that in America the system it is very different from the european one. It's more individualistic and almost everything is private. When in Europe there is the social security, in America the people have to pay for all their medical treatments and save for their retirement by buying pension funds, for example.
The second notion is to have their own house, which is a heritage of the American Dream which made dreaming the emigrants dream in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because to have their house we have to have money, the basic element of the American dream.
In this graph we can see a kind of evolution in the demands and need of the people because of drastic changes in society.

Myths and Heros : The American dream

Definition :

The american Dream is a very strong belief for emigrants from all over the world (and for American themselves) in the ideal that America is a land of oportunity where everyone can work their way up upward mobility through hard work and willpower an make their dreams come true in order to reach material prosperity in pursuit of happiness.

A Witness as a thriller

 From the blog : http://bethrigby.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/section-one-thriller-genre.html

Definition of the thriller genre :
These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.  

 

Primary elements of  the Thriller as a genre	Witness as a thriller Illustration in the film
1.Central protagonist The central protagonist(s) faces death, their own or someone else's.	John Book faces his own death when he is shot in the parking lot.  Is also faces the death of this partner, carter.  Samuel  also faces death when he is in the bathroom and then when he has become an eyewitness.
2.Force/s of antagonism The force/s of antagonism must initially be clever and/or stronger than the protagonist.	At the first, the durty cop is more powerfull because there is in the higher position and sheaffer is the john boss, and then John is alone and isolated in the Amish community, where he is vulnerable.
3.Main storyline The main storyline for the protagonist is either a quest or the character who cannot be put down.	The john's quest consists in finding the killer and uncovering the corruption ring. He also wants to avenge carter's death.
4.Main plotline The main plot line focuses on a mystery that must be solved.	The mystery John  has to find out is to find the motive behind the murder of the police officer.
5.Narrative construction The film's narrative construction is dominated by the protagonist's point of view.	The beginning of the film is only concerned with the Amish and there laft time, but then we learn about Carter's Death through the John Point of vue and Rachel and Samuel through is eyes mostly.
6.Action and characters All action and characters must be credibly realistic/natural in their representation on screen.	The Amish way of life it is very credibly depicted through the barn-rising, Rachel sponge bath. When his sister describes John it is also very realistic.
7.Major themes The two major themes that underpin the Thriller are the desire for justice and the morality of individuals.	John takes justice in his own hands in order to avenge his friends and colleagues. The Amish as a whole enbody the highest degree of morality.
8.Small but significant aspect  One small but significant aspect of a great thriller is the presence of innocence in what is seen as an essentially corrupt world.	Samuel and the whole Amish community enbody innocence because their values are basically pure. The corruption and the violence inside of the police represent the corruption of the modern world.